Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin once said every part of your business should have its allotted time in a day and age of endless technology alerts and distractions. I couldn't agree more with that quote. Over the past few weeks I've been experimenting with a not so new time management method and that is time blocking. Essentially time blocking allows you to figure out how you want to spend every minute of your day. As a father to a young daughter and a husband I want to make sure at the end of my work day I've done all the work that I needed to do, feel satisfied about it so that I can shut down and spend quality time with family. Now as I mentioned time blocking is nothing new but what I'm doing specifically is following Cal Newport's time blocking planner. So he's got his own kind of system that he's been using for many years and he's refined it, tweaked it to the point that it is now. He explains and illustrates how to use his time blocking system in a couple of these pages. All right now I want to show you how the time block planner works. Start with jotting down your week ahead. This will provide guidance for your time block schedule you build each day of the week. Typically I write down three main things I want to get done for that week that way I don't get overwhelmed, start procrastinating and so I don't get disappointed if I don't get those main things done. You'll see in this example I've written down three main things complete website about page, record two videos and prepare for Black Friday sale. Now with your week ahead done let's move on to the main time blocking pages. On the left you have the current week and day. You'll also see daily metrics, tasks, ideas and a checkbox for shutdown complete. I'll explain more about each of these and how to use it in a minute but first let me talk about the main time blocking schedule. So what you do is you enter today's date. Below that which looks like a grid is the main time blocking page. Each dark line represents an hour. So what you're going to want to do is add your hours. So if you start at 9am in the morning then you start with 9am going on to 10 11 12 all the way to the end of your work hour. Next up add your time blocks. In Kyle Newport's example you'll see from 9 to 11am he's got finish report and by the way that number in parenthesis allows you to elaborate on that task as you can see with the morning tasks. Here's an example of a previous time block schedule. I usually start my days early at 6am which is when my daughter gets up so she is my natural alarm clock. So in my case what I do is start the time block at 6am then 7, 8, 9, 10 all the way to 5pm. You'll see from 6am to 6.30 I have read so I like to read a book in the morning first thing and then from 6.30 in the morning to 8am I've got outline videos. Between 8 and 8.30 I get my daughter ready for school. After that I eat a bit of breakfast, get ready, get changed and then start recording from 9am all the way to midday and then after that I've got lunch followed by video editing from 1 to 3pm. Typically during the late afternoon for me it's 3pm to 5pm. I like to do administrative work so that's things like replying to comments and also answering any support tickets or emails. When you're scheduling your time blocks schedule more time than you think you need. Kyle Newport advises 20 to 30% buffer is a good start. Now let me go back and explain what's on the left page and how to fill it. But before I move ahead a quick word about our sponsor MeisterTask. MeisterTask is an online task management tool that can help scale your business as it allows you to work harmoniously with your team members and clients. With MeisterTask you can track an unlimited number of projects easily and keep up with your team through task watching and notifications. It's also beautifully intuitive and customisable. MeisterTask uses kanban boards which is my favourite format when it comes to task management because it's visual. You can customise the background, choose different icons and much more. MeisterTask is also smart and efficient. You can create automations to save time. So let's say you want to move this task from scheduled to done. It will then mark it as completed. Whether you're looking to manage your entire sales process, stay on track of your content schedule or simply want to check off your daily task. MeisterTask is extremely flexible. Get started with MeisterTask today. I'll provide a link in the description box below so you can go straight to there. Now back to the video. Let's talk about daily metrics first. Daily metrics is kind of like if you're trying to hit 10,000 steps for the day. So depending on what you do, your occupation or what your task involves that really is dependent on that. For some people could be a target amount of hours of distraction free work. Let's say four hours of distraction free work. Or it could be as simple as posting at least one Instagram story. The purpose of key metrics is to help you measure your performance, perhaps even track your habits so that you can improve the next time. And it also helps you in terms of keeping you accountable. Next, you've got a column for tasks and a column for ideas. The task column is used for any unexpected tasks that you need to do. Let's say someone knocks on the door, and then they tell you to do task A, but you're busy currently doing one of your tasks. So that's where you go in, write down anything that comes your way so that you can manage that later on. The ideas column is kind of self explanatory. Whenever you come up with any ideas, rather than having them in your head, write them down in the ideas column. Now here's what I really love about Cal Newport's time blocking system. As you may have noticed, there's a checkbox for a thing called shutdown complete. Cal says one of the most important things about this system is being able to shut down after you've completed your day. It helps fully shift your mind from work to life outside of work. To help you transition from work to completely shut down, Cal Newport advises to look to your schedule, make sure that you haven't missed anything. If there are any things such as emails or messages that you need to respond to, it's a good idea to get them out of the way. Otherwise, it's going to be hard for your brain to shut off because you're going to be thinking about that for the rest of your evening. You simply repeat these steps for the rest of the days of the week. Now, when do you actually schedule and write these things down? Let's say the week ahead. You could do this on a Sunday evening, let's say, or a Monday morning. It's up to you. One thing I want to note and echo from Cal Newport's time block planner is that the system shouldn't substitute your existing calendar system or to-do app. They should work in harmony and together. By the way, if you're not a pen and paper type of person, by all means, create a digital version, let's say on Notion. I have seen that done, so it's really up to you. All right, that right about wraps up this video. I hope it was helpful. I'd love to know what time management system or productivity method you use to get more done. Comment below, I'd love to know. That's all from me. Do give this video a thumbs up and stick around to watch one of these next videos.